Nobel Laureate Visits Austin Prep, Speaks With Students

READING, MA — Students at Austin Preparatory School in Reading had a rare opportunity to meet and ask questions of one of the 2015 recipients of the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Dr. William Campbell of North Andover gave a modified version of his Nobel lecture to upper school students.

He is a biologist and parasitologist whose research helped discover a treatment for infections cause by roundworms. He helped discover avermectins, a class of drugs that treats River Blindness and other parasitic diseases.

In the late 1980s Dr. Campbell helped persuade his then-employer Merck Research Laboratories to distribute a modified version of the drug called ivermectin without charge wherever it was needed. According to numerous reports, this has hugely helped to combat parasitic diseases in Africa, Latin America and Yemen.

According to the World Health Organization, 98 million people in 31 African countries receive annual treatment through the program. Since 2009 the WHO’s focus on River Blindness has shifted from treatment to elimination.

Dr. Campbell received his Nobel Prize in Stockholm, Sweden in December. He told students the “ceremony” is actually a week long and filled with different formal meetings and ceremonies, where he and his wife met and dined with international dignitaries, and even royalty.

Many students have been studying infectious diseases and their causes in science classes and were somewhat familiar with Dr. Campbell’s research. After his presentation, they asked him many questions about his work, moral obligations to treat diseases, and advice on how to become a research scientist.

“Find hard work you find satisfying,” he said. “Take every opportunity to get into a lab when you can and do experiments where the answers are still unknown.”

(NOTE: The above press release is from Austin Prep.)

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